Zither family

Thank you for helping us expand this topic!
Simply begin typing or use the editing tools above to add to this article.
Once you are finished and click submit, your modifications will be sent to our editors for review.

Ads by Google

This topic is discussed in the following articles:

characteristics

Instruments of the
zither family assume a variety of forms. The body may be a flexible stick, as in the musical bow, or may be a rigid bar, as in many Indian and Southeast Asian and some African zithers. Bar zithers often have high frets; one-stringed varieties may be called monochords. The resonators of bar and stick zithers are usually gourds or the player’s mouth. A zither body may be a tube...

Instruments of the
zither family, in which the strings lie parallel to and are of the same length as the string bearer (often also the resonator), are especially widely distributed in Eurasia, the Americas, and Africa. The least-complex zither type of instrument is the musical bow, shaped very much like a hunter’s bow. (The musical bow is sometimes classified as a harp.) The bow’s single string...

development

Several different types of instruments are classified as zithers; they are used today in all continents. The long zithers of China, Japan, and Korea, which have a curved surface and a long, narrow shape, display a possible link to the idiochordic bamboo zithers of the Pacific, Southeast Asia, and southeastern Africa. The importance of bamboo to music in Asia is literally legendary; in Java,...

Japanese music

...at the death of a leader. One
haniwa has been found playing a barrel drum with a stick, while another figure is seated with a four- or five-stringed board zither across his lap. Crotal bells (pellet or jingle bells) are found on costumes, and some statues seem to be of singers. The zither is of special interest, for it is related to the Korean...

Click anywhere inside the article to add text or insert superscripts, subscripts, and special characters.
You can also highlight a section and use the tools in this bar to modify existing content:

Add links to related Britannica articles!
You can double-click any word or highlight a word or phrase in the text below and then select an article from the search box.
Or, simply highlight a word or phrase in the article, then enter the article name or term you'd like to link to in the search box below, and select from the list of results.

Note: we do not allow links to external resources in editor.
Please click the Web sites link for this article to add citations for
external Web sites.